City ensures public school kids score from Cup

Fourth graders in San Francisco public schools will get to learn at the Treasure Island Sailing Center like these kids did, thanks to grants from the city’s effort to host the America’s Cup. (Courtesy of Treasure Island Sailing Center.)

The Treasure Island Sailing Center, a nonprofit that provides sailing and related lessons to youth from different financial backgrounds, has so far received $200,000 in grants and other awards because of the Cup, with at least another $75,000 expected. The money is being used to start an “experiential learning” program being offered free to fourth graders in San Francisco public schools, where they learn about bay ecology, maritime history or renewable energy. Oh, and they also learn how to sail.

“This is huge for our program,” said Jana Steel, the sailing center’s executive director. “We can only go up from here.”

The money has allowed the Treasure Island nonprofit to buy and furnish a double-wide trailer to serve as a classroom for its Set Sail Learn program. The donations will also fund an instructor and new boats. The 15 classes the center is offering this fall for fourth graders filled up within five days, Steel said. Another 60 classes are planned for this spring. Each can accommodate 32 to 35 kids, which means at least 2,400 public school fourth graders will get to experience the bay on a sailboat.

“Our kids are benefiting greatly from the America’s Cup being in San Francisco,” Steel said.

Almost all of the funding for the Set Sail Learn program is coming from the America’s Cup Organizing Committee, the group of civic leaders whose primary mission is to raise money to offset city costs over nearly three months of racing. Extending the benefits of the regatta to underprivileged youth – part of Larry Ellison’s racing syndicate’s original hosting pitch – was a priority of Mayor Ed Lee as he considered the long-term benefits of event, said Kyri McClellan, CEO of the organizing committee.

It also was a good selling point as the committee tried to drum up donations to cover about $22 million in city event costs.

The organizing committee has so far given the Treasure Island Sailing Center $175,000 out of a planned $250,000. The funding includes $50,000 from the $250,000 fine that the International Sailing Federation jury recently levied against Oracle Team USA in a cheating scandal involving preseason races months earlier. Lee had the authority to designate the beneficiary of half of the fine. The remaining $75,000 went to Mission Neighborhood Centers.

Separately, Steel said the Treasure Island Sailing Center got an additional $25,000 from an earlier fine levied against Italian team Luna Rossa for boycotting events at the start of the challenger series.

The original host city agreement called for the America’s Cup Event Authority, the business arm of software billionaire Larry Ellison’s Oracle Team USA racing syndicate, to, among other things, “conduct youth sailing courses, and provide event passes to San Francisco’s children, youth and families at no cost.”

The authority has provided outreach and free passes to numerous groups, and says it hosted 1,600 school children at its venues. The authority provided 50 tickets to the Treasure Island Sailing Center, and donated a portion of proceeds from a concert at the America’s Cup pavilion earlier this year that amounted to about $1,000, Steel said.

The authority also created 39 internships for local youth and young adults and said it supported 250 nonprofits, including a partnership with SailSFBay, which serves as a gateway to sailing clubs and programs around the bay. That has resulted in extensive outreach programs, children’s tours and an updated web site for the group, but not funding for actual youth sailing classes, said John Arndt, associate publisher of sailing magazine Latitude 38 and a member of SailSFBay’s steering committee.

“Unfortunately, the event, as you know, had a real hard time getting traction with teams, with sponsors, had a lot of turnover with their staffing,” Arndt said. “It was a difficult time for them to pay attention to us. … We really didn’t create the program we hoped to create when we started, but they weren’t able to either.”